Jose Ingenieros

The Mediocre Man Jose Ingenieros

The book that made the most powerful impact in my adolescence was "El Hombre Mediocre" (The Mediocre Man), Jose Ingenieros' most important work. I read it when I was 17 years old, growing up in my Argentina's Pampas. Upon its completion, and motivated to drink all I could from his rich fountain, I found his published works and made quick progress with all of them as you may as well, once you devour his first page. Jose Ingenieros grew up in Argentina, where he graduated as a physician from the University of Buenos Aires in 1900. He later became a psychiatrist but his deep love for literature kept him active in intellectual endeavors throughout his short life. He was philosophically most influenced by Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Auguste Comte. He became an active positivist philosopher, embracing effort and education as the pillars of human development and achievement. His philosophy was akin to Ayn Rand's, but he wrote this book in 1913 when Ms. Rand was just 8 years-old and decades before The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were published, motivating so many in college campuses throughout the United States over the past seven decades. He wrote about the human condition, society and the motivations behind human behavior. The mediocre man is that quantitative man, able to understand more from less but not the best from the worse. The Idealist is a qualitative man who distinguishes the bad he observes from the better he imagines. After reading Ingenieros, reviewing his concepts of idealism and his merciless flogging of mediocrity, I could no longer sit idle in my free time. It forced me to observe human behavior under a different glass and light, and while we continue to be complex creatures difficult to throw into boxes and impossible to paint with a broad brush, it has provided motivation and opened my eyes to geniuses of creation, saints and heroes alike. It has helped me look for answers to understand our Universe and my place within it. It has reaffirmed the role of reason and observation in that quest and reduced the importance of dogma. His most important philosophical and social work is translated here for your enjoyment. At a time when human attention is under attack by so many distracting stimuli and influences, I hope this short book will motivate new generations of adolescents to emulate Jose Ingenieros and the eternal values he discussed and promoted.